Concert4aCause

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early October with the proceeds going to Avalon Housing, a non-profit that provides supportive housing for people with extremely low incomes. This wasn't the first such show Concert4aCause has put on--shows from the last two years have benefited the Red Cross, SafeHouse, and the School for Yoga Action. It may or may not have had the widest assortment of performers, but the performers and the sequence was always--always--surprising.

The show started with Charles Ives' The Side Show, an offbeat fanfare performed by trombonist Randall Hawes and pianist Kathryn Goodson, then followed it with Goodson tearing into The Alcotts, Ives' Beethovenian depiction of family life, with giddy virtuosity. So far, so good--and then came Dina Soresi Winter's magnificently inflected declamation of Arvia MacKaye Ege's "A Bitter Fruit" and eurythmist Claudia Fontana's luminously diaphanous interpretation of that same text through the marvels of rhythmic movement.

Next, trombonist Hawes returned with cellist Sarah Cleveland for a beautifully played and wonderfully playful pair of duets: a bit of wit from the French baroque by Boismortier and a dab of Old Argentina in the form of Un Choro em Buenos Aires by Gilberto Gagliardi. Last up before intermission was the most unusual grouping yet: a sensitive account of Chopin's E-flat major Nocturne by pianist Adrienne Clark, another grandiloquent reading by Soresi Winter with another pellucid series of movements from Fontana on Soloviof's Immanuel, and finally the return of Cleveland for a highly dramatic take on Chopin's Funeral March arranged for cello and piano.